Around the World

Around the World
Sheet music cover (cropped)
Music	Cole Porter
Lyrics	Cole Porter
Book	adapted by Orson Welles
Basis	Jules Verne novel, Around the World in Eighty Days
Productions	1946 Broadway

Around the World is a musical with a book adapted by Orson Welles, based on the Jules Verne novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. It involves an around-the-world adventure by Phileas Fogg.

Music, lyrics and incidental score are by Cole Porter. The expensive "musical extravaganza" opened on Broadway in 1946 but it flopped and closed after 75 performances.

History

Orson Welles had decided to make a musical out of one of his favorite childhood books, Around the World in Eighty Days. He wanted an entire circus on stage, a train running through the West, and had other extravagant production ideas. He raised money from Mike Todd, the producer William Goetz, and the holder of the European rights to the title, Alexander Korda. However, he had no money left for a star cast and used performers who were not well known. According to Charles Higham (writer of a highly critical Welles biography) "Porter wrote the songs far too quickly and badly".^[1]

The show had a cast of 70 and included four mechanical elephants and 54 stage hands. Mike Todd pulled out, and Welles put up his own money. He also borrowed from Columbia Pictures president, Harry Cohn, on a promise to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no fee. He kept his promise, making the film The Lady from Shanghai.^[2]

Playwright John van Druten described the musical as "enormous fun" and Joshua Logan said it was "fresh, witty, magical, exciting". However, with no story and unclear relationships between the characters, the show closed quickly, with Welles losing his savings, and the investors losing "large sums".^[1]

Synopsis

Phileas Fogg bets that he can go around the world in 80 days. Fogg is accompanied by his assistant, "Pat" Passepartout. They are pursued on this adventure by a police officer, Inspector Fix, who is persistent but incompetent. Inspector Fix believes that Fogg has possession of stolen money.

Songs

Productions

Around the World began pre-Broadway tryouts at the Boston Opera House, Boston on April 28, 1946, moved to the Shubert Theatre, New Haven on May 7, 1946, and then transferred to the Shubert Theatre, Philadelphia on May 14, 1946.

The production premiered on Broadway at the Adelphi Theater on May 31, 1946 and closed on August 3, 1946 after 75 performances. After the failure of the New York production, Welles was keen to stage the show in London, where Alexander Korda predicted it would be a great success, but British trade union rules would not allow the use of the elaborate props and sets built for the American production, and they were burned. The sets proved too expensive to construct again, and the show never again received a full-scale staging.^[3]

It was produced and directed by Orson Welles with circus sequences created by Barbette, choreography by Nelson Barclift, costumes by Alvin Colt, set design by Robert Davison, and lighting by Peggy Clark. The cast featured Arthur Margetson as Phileas Fogg, Larry Laurence as "Pat" Passepartout, Julie Warren as Molly Muggins, and Orson Welles as Dick Fix. The show had 38 sets, which Welles asked to be designed in the style of the films of Georges Méliès.^[4]

The "Lost Musicals" series presented a concert version at the Lilian Baylis Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, London, in June - July 2007 ^[5]

Radio broadcast

During the show's run, Welles was also producing, directing, writing, presenting and co-starring in the anthology radio series The Mercury Summer Theatre on the Air. The show's first episode, broadcast on 7 June 1946, was a heavily abridged version of the musical, truncated to meet the radio programme's half-hour format. All of the principal cast participated, and the radio broadcast remains the only recording of any portion of Cole Porter's Around the World score.

Response

Critic Lewis Nichols of The New York Times calling the musical "only fitfully amusing", noted that the production "has spared no expense in gadgets and effects. There are movies of the flicker era, a miniature train crossing a bridge ... and desperate men and bold clinging to the rails of pounding ships at sea. In other words, Around the World has the making for an hilarious evening. It does not come off because it lacks unity. There are too many styles fighting among themselves ... the dances generally are miles removed from Mr. Welles' burlesque. Finally, Cole Porter has written an inferior score, the songs being on the usual musical comedy subjects and delivered without the zest brought to the show by its mainstay.... Perhaps the best part of the show is a circus, with acrobats, a rope walker and with Mr. Welles, himself, as the magician."^[6]

During the show's run, Bertolt Brecht went to see it, and went to congratulate Welles backstage after the show, declaring it to be "the greatest American theatre he had ever seen".^[7]

References

External links

• Around the World at the Internet Broadway Database
• Around the World production, songs, and plot at sondheimguide.com